The Rise and Fall of American Art, 1940s1980s

This book challenges the perception of New York as the undisputed center of the art world between the end of World War II and the fall of the Berlin Wall, a position of power that brought the city prestige, money, and historical recognition. In her transnational and interdisciplinary study, Dossin analyses changing distributions of geopolitical and symbolic power in the Western art worlds - a story that spans two continents, forty years, and hundreds of actors.

In The Rise and Fall of American Art, 1940s-1980s, Catherine Dossin challenges the now-mythic perception of New York as the undisputed center of the art world between the end of World War II and the fall of the Berlin Wall, a position of power that brought the city prestige, money, and historical recognition. Dossin reconstructs the concrete factors that led to the shift of international attention from Paris to New York in the 1950s, and documents how 'peripheries' such as Italy, Belgium, and West Germany exerted a decisive influence on this displacement of power. As the US economy sank into recession in the 1970s, however, American artists and dealers became increasingly dependent on the support of Western Europeans, and cities like Cologne and Turin emerged as major commercial and artistic hubs - a development that enabled European artists to return to the forefront of the international art scene in the 1980s. Dossin analyses in detail these changing distributions of geopolitical and symbolic power in the Western art worlds - a story that spans two continents, forty years, and hundreds of actors. Her transnational and interdisciplinary study provides an original and welcome supplement to more traditional formal and national readings of the period.

"Dossin has provided a useful paradigm through which to view the recent history of Western art and art markets, one that challenges the conventional and limited narrative found in most art history textbooks.... Dossin has provided a compelling framework to help us track the geopolitics of the contemporary art world." - American Historical Review

Autorentext
Catherine Dossin is Associate Professor of Art History at Purdue University, USA.

Inhalt
Introduction: from the 'Fall of Paris' to the 'Invasion of New York'; 'Art ... a language that should unite': the diversity of the postwar art worlds; Vehemences Confrontees: the limits of postwar artistic exchanges; 'We will always have Paris': the domination of Paris in the 1950s; 'The future is in New York': the strength of the US art worlds in the late 1950s; This Is Tomorrow: the triumph of the American way in the 1960s; I like America and America likes me: the European domination of American art in the 1970s; A New Spirit in Painting: the European comeback of the 1980s; Epilogue: consequences of the European comeback; Index.